


Long-term recruitment

by Slant



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Near Future, Swearing, good governance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3154031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sera receives an unexpected job offer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Oi! mustard-stains. We gotta problem, and you're helping."  
"Piss off, high-and-mighty." Unlike Solas telling me that other people are `petty', this is a deliberate height crack. It's less offensive than his unquestioning asumption of superiority. Sera's a gobshite, but she knows she's down in the shit with the rest of us.  
"You know neither of us can ever be faces in the crowd again, right? We're sodding famous. You've got a song and everything. There'll be portaits."  
"What, and?"  
"Well I know I'm not going back to the Carta. You got any idea what you're doing? You can't be all blending in for the Jennys if everyone knows you you are."  
"Shitfuckers!"  
"I gotta runaway theocratic state-like entity that you can stick with." It might ruin her life but I gotta make the offer.  
"Reckon we can do more good for the dusters if I sit on the big chair and tell the sword-castes not to be shits. With, like oddly-speciffic `I know how your fucking the brands.' "  
"Ugh, that's no fun! We should _do_ stuff."  
"I guess we can let them off with a wedgie on a first offence, but how often do you off an arsehole and have his arsehole son take right over on the pot?"  
She sniggers but she hates it too. I think she'll give it a go, if we win. Dunno how long she'll stick for though.  
"See you, best of the vein." I get as far as the door before she calls me a Stone-blind wanabe, so she's not that upset. Good. I did just throw her life upside down.  
"Watch it. I'll send you to Solas for elfy-elfing classes."


	2. Devoid of meaning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You never really know what's going on in someone's head until Cole starts freaking out.

"Falling. Wind in my hair tearing at my clothes. Eyes squint shut and water. Ground rushes up to meet me. Stop. Chin shatters. Skull splits bursting. Darkness and silence and nothing at all."  
"Can I help you inquisitor? I'd be obliged if your lordship stood back a bit. It'd be a mite embarrassing to have you die in a construction accident," said Bernardine. She'd been at Skyhold of long enough that some of the awe had rubbed off, and of course, she'd always worked for nobility, who were, in general, bloody useless on a construction site.   
Cole lets out a shreik, "didn't stop today. Still falling. Always falling until the stop. Only one future. Many details but one big truth."  
"Cole, what's going on?"  
"Oh is it the fade-boy? I can't see him."  
"She can't see me. I can't make her forget. Not anything. Not ever. Not for a moment."  
"Vertigo on solid ground. Spinning and lurching and perfectly still. Thick basalt walls, heavy and real and seen for what it is: surface covering emptyness."  
"Listen if I can't see you I can't do site safety for you, so please stay away from the scaffold."  
"She's going to move and reshape stones. They did nothing of value in their orignal location, gain no intrinsic purpose in their shaping, and mean nothing in the place where she puts them." Cole gibbers quietly for a bit. "These walls arn't there. People stand on nothing. They see stone but I know there is nothing."  
"If there's nothing you need, the same goes for you Inquisitor. Don't distract my crew and maybe we can make it to the end of the day without another accident."  
"Eventually she will die."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I orignally wrote Cole's part of this to go with Sara's job offer - her fear of nothingness seems like the sort suffering-as-an-integral-part-of-living that would make Cole twitch if you forbid him from killing people, but I couldn't get it to fit together. So you get nihilistic Chief engineer Bernardine* instead.
> 
> I'm possibly slightly too taken with the idea of trying to have a conversation with someone while Cole howls their suffering in your ear. Caring about Cole is very difficult for me.  
> There a Codex about how the landscape in the Fade ignore physics, but walls are purposefully shaped so they do what the shaper expected them to do. Bernardine's walls don't stand in the fade. She doesn't dream. 
> 
> *Bernardine is mentioned as running the crew that clears the path to the Snow white quest. There might be a better ID for this character in one of the notes when you first move into Skyhold, but I missed it.


End file.
